Looks like depression.
Also obviously you know what to do. Good luck finding strength and will to do it.
I am paralyzed mentally; not physically, and I don't mean to amplify what I'm talking about to the level of someone who actually does suffer from that. I just don't really know how to describe what I feel in any other concise way.
In a lot of ways, I feel like I cannot move and I can't tell if it's my fault or the fault of something else. I went to therapy for the first time last week, and I have my next appointment tomorrow - yay! I talked quite a lot about one thing, exactly this. She mentioned that it sounds like I'm experiencing a value crisis and I think that sums it up quite well. I am stuck where I'm at because all the paths I can currently take go against what I believe, and what's more, the people urging me to take those paths are the same ones who taught me to be conscientious about my life choices and that what you believe is more important than anything. This has lead to me not being able to do anything, but that's not really a choice.
Has anyone else experience this? I will elaborate if necessary.
Cheers,
~jr
Looks like depression.
Also obviously you know what to do. Good luck finding strength and will to do it.
Yeah I've experienced that stuck feeling before. Maybe for a different reason but definitely similar symptoms. I always stopped myself from pursuing anything because I always believed the movies where someone found their true calling, and this just never happened for me. I ended up realizing though that I don't have to follow the path set up for me, or follow my instincts either, r that I can choose to become whatever I think is interesting and want to become part of me, and I don't gotta box myself into one thing.
Do you find yourself in a similar position as me or is it different?
~theo
I'll give a little context; I am in school for software engineering at a school that's meant to teach you how to be a good employee essentially (more so than others, I guess - Western Governors University is the name if you want to check it out). I, however, do not want to do this because I do not want to spend my life building software that actively harms people or is useless proprietary/corporate stuff. I'm sure there are startups out there that *don't* do these things but as I'm sure you can guess (as I reside on the smallweb almost entirely), I am not a startup kind of guy.
Many of my friends have expressed similar sentiments, saying that they'd love to own a coffee shop/run a small farm/etc. They all plan on doing this when they're done with all the "real work," but I can't imagine spending a very large portion of my life wasting away and running parallel to the simple lifestyle I want.
To be clear, I know I can't single-handedly do everything or change the world or whatever; I just want to be happy and make my footprint as little as possible. It seems as if to do this, I have to be very sad and work a job I hate, and then at the end of that in 50 years I'll be able to do whatever I want.
To me, it seems not worth it at all to do this. Maybe I'll start a nonprofit, I'll seek out open source work, or maybe I'll find a place that doesn't suck...
Until then.
I wasn't sure from the original post, but based on this I can safely say: I've been in this exact same position. Specifically in my last year of school in 2019-2020.
Ultimately what spurred me out of it was two things, first, obviously was COVID hitting, so I felt lucky to have any job at all. Second was my boyfriend's (now husband's) career choice of being a starving artist; I wanted to support him as best as I could.
So here I am almost three years later, working a job that I don't especially enjoy for a big-tech company I hate. My routine is work maybe 6 out of the 8 hours I'm supposed to and generally just be checked out. The pay is good and it's not too taxing. Though I do think it has really harmed my enjoyment of computers, since I know I need to go through some corporate bullshit to open source any hobby projects, which makes me not even want to write them.
All in all, I think I'd make the same decisions over again, but I'm always keeping an eye on the exit door, looking for a slightly less awful way to exist. But ya know, the problem is capitalism and we'll probably be facing it until global warming gets us all.
Anyway, idk, if there's anything you want to talk/ask about in a less public forum, my email is on my pub profile, feel free to drop a line. And good luck, with whichever way you go. (And hey, if you find a way to do a tech job that doesn't suck, I'd love to know)
Hello ~jr,
you don't have to throw everything away. You could choose to learn the tools, and the patterns, and what can make the patterns visible. You can invest time in things like lightbeam (plugin for firefox; there is another project like this, but I forgot the name). In other words "know your enemy". I believe it is allowed to pursue something in quest for a better jumping point.
I have once upon a time decided to not pursue an academic career any further. And I found out, that the number of possibilities just increased from there on. However, I am grateful and a little proud, that I finished that last degree rather than giving up. Allthough times were dark and pessimistic for several long months.
Cheers,
don't give up. Telling the Midnighters about it is not a bad move.
~ew
~bartender? How about some herbs in the form of tea? Maybe something to infuse some sunlight into the poor soul at the counter? Yes? That would be so nice!